It was a send-it-back, upside-down-tree-connections thing, running through Facebook. “He has become one of the few writers of our time.I took part in a book pyramid scheme recently.

the thought becomes poetry and the poetry illuminates thought.” -Langston Hughes And he uses words as the sea uses waves, to flow and beat, advance and retreat, rise and take a bow in disappearing.

“He is thought-provoking, tantalizing, irritating, abusing and amusing. “He has not himself lost access to the sources of his being -which is what makes him read and awaited by perhaps a wider range of people than any other major American writer.” - The Nation “This author retains a place in an extremely select group that composed of the few genuinely indispensable American writers.” - Saturday Review “To be James Baldwin is to touch on so many hidden places in Europe, America, the Negro, the white man -to be forced to understand so much.” -Alfred Kazin “Violent, excruciating beauty.” -San Francisco Chronicle a book that belongs in the top rank of fiction.” -The Atlantic Baldwin has taken a very special theme and treated it with great artistry and restraint.” -Saturday Review immediate emotional impact.” -The Washington Post Baldwin writes of these matters with unusual candor and yet with such dignity and intensity.” -The New York Times “A young American involved with both a woman and a man. “If Van Gogh was our 19th-century artist-saint, James Baldwin is our 20th-century one.” -Michael Ondaatje But Hella’s return to Paris brings the affair to a crisis, one that rapidly spirals into tragedy.ĭavid struggles for self-knowledge during one long, dark night-“the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life.” With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin's now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a deeply moving story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart. Soon the two are spending the night in Giovanni’s curtainless room, which he keeps dark to protect their privacy. While she is away on a trip, David meets a bartender named Giovanni to whom he is drawn in spite of himself. In the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality.ĭavid is a young American expatriate who has just proposed marriage to his girlfriend, Hella. From one of the most brilliant and provocative literary figures of the past century comes a groundbreaking novel set among the bohemian bars and nightclubs of 1950s Paris, about love and the fear of love-'a book that belongs in the top rank of fiction' ( The Atlantic).

Books like giovanni's room